Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Hard Work Pays Off

Monday. Day 35. With the Super Bowl last night, Jay and I decided our tempo run would take place at lunch. The extra sleep was good and I felt well rested when I woke up. Meeting at lunch time, the weather was very agreeable for running. Nearly 50 degrees. I had originally thought two shirts, but ditched the second shirt after some consideration. Good call.

Jay and I were both a bit nervous, about this run, a 1 EZ 5 tempo and 1 EZ, the tempo was 7:13. It was decide we would run the Greenway, an easy way to warm up it is exactly 1 mile to the first marker and provides markers the entire distance.

Off we went, the warm up is mostly down hill and at one point we were already running 7:17. I looked at Jay and said, “ hey we better reel this in” He agreed.

Hitting the one mile mark, I hit my watch and off we went. Jay was strong and dictated the pace for the first mile. I was thinking this seems fast. Sure enough we were running a sub 7 minute mile at the first marker. Jay say’s, “Bob we have to back it off”… it never happened. It seemed that Jay drove the pace for the first 2.5 miles and I drove the pace for the last 2.5 miles. The pace was uncomfortable, except for a few points where I felt strong, though that was mostly toward the end when I knew I was nearly done. The cool down mile was difficult as we were now climbing the hill that we ran down during the warm up. Clearly we were not running 7:17 like we did on the warm up.

Back at the gym I started running the numbers, we ran 5 miles at a 6:49 pace. Not what we were supposed to do, but it felt good and answered a question that that had been sitting at the back of my mind, how was I going to run a sub 7 mile pace on race day. Now I know the training is paying off. Need to keep up the hard work.

Weight. 181. Still bad.

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